foursquare is joining the OpenStreetMap movement! Say hi to pretty new maps!

Feb 29th

We usually use this blog for bigproductannouncements,
but, as a startup, we also often think about how we can make life
easier for other startups. Today, we’re doing both – a little
announcement, and hopefully some help for other startups that are
thinking about the same things.So, the announcement:
Starting today, we’re embracing the OpenStreetMap
movement, so all the maps you see when you go to foursquare.com will
look a tiny bit different (we think the new ones are really pretty).
Other than slightly different colors and buttons, though, foursquare is
still the same site you know and love.

Now, the explanation:
If you’re still reading this, you’re either really bored or you’re curious as to why we would make such a big technical change.
We’ve been using the Google Maps API since the early days of
foursquare. In the last six months, though, we’ve seen an increasing
number of companies migrating to otheroptions. So, during our January hackathon, one of our intrepid engineers wondered what the world would look like if we made our own maps. To do that, he used data from OpenStreetMap.
(It’s a crowd-sourced global atlas, and it’s kind of amazing! It’s like
Wikipedia for geography.) We love the idea of open data, and were happy
to try it out. (...)